Dnes se podíváme na to, jak spolupracovat s procurementem tak, aby to bylo výhodné pro všechny straToday, we'll look at how to work with Procurement in a way that is beneficial to all parties. My guest is Olga Rinaldi, procurement expert and founder of Rinaldi Consulting Ltd, a boutique consulting studio that focuses on innovation in procurement processes.
Purchasing processes can be a source of frustration, especially if you feel that buyers are getting in the way and slowing down the sales cycle. But what if you could use this situation as an opportunity to improve the relationship between purchasing and sales, and thereby speed up and streamline the entire process? What if the procurement team became your partner to help you?
Olga, who has more than 20 years of experience in purchasing, reveals the secrets of how to negotiate properly with a buyer without losing trust. We'll discuss what the ideal collaboration between salespeople and buyers should look like, how to set up processes to be effective, and how to ensure your business has a strong, reliable partner to support you through the tough times.
You will find:
"Sellers, be open. Go shopping, be open, innovate. Go with discounts.And if something goes wrong, understand that we have processes and we don't want to hurt you."
Olga Rinaldi | Founder @ Olga Rinaldi Consulting s.r.o.
In this episode, you'll learn how to avoid common pitfalls that can slow down your negotiations, and how to approach complex, long-term projects like ERP system implementations or manufacturing machine purchases. Olga will share specific tips on how to avoid the biggest mistakes that salespeople often make in purchasing negotiations.
🔸 How to negotiate effectively and gain an advantage?
🔸 How to align purchasing and sales teams? 🔸 How to approach the purchase of large investment units? 🔸 How to avoid the most common mistakes that hold back your orders?
🔸 How to become a reliable procurement partner?
Listen to the full episode to how to work together to achieve long-term success andimproving business processes. This episode is a must-watch for anyone looking to streamline their sales cycles and build strong, mutually beneficial relationships with their buying teams.
Why it's important to have shopping and business on the same page (Interview transcript)
Who is Olga Rinaldi
Martin Hurych
Hello. I'm Martin Hurych and this is another Ignition. If you like anything I do and don't want to miss out on anything in the future, consider joining the more than 1,300 owners and directors of engineering, technology and manufacturing companies. They've already seen the benefits of my newsletter. Today, I'd like to put at least a small bow on the battle between purchasing and procurement, and I'd like to show you here what such proper procurement for high-ticket products should look like. I've brought on a guest, or rather a guest, Olga Rinaldi, who relatively recently started a boutique procurement consultancy. But it wouldn't be Olga if she hadn't caused a proper storm on the procurement waves less than six months. Hello.
Olga Rinaldi
Hi, Martin.
What did she buy that disappointed ?
Martin Hurych
You said in your prep that you like to shop like almost every lady. I was listening to another podcast which motivated me to ask, what's the most expensive thing you've ever bought and when have you regretted it?
Olga Rinaldi
I won't mention the glass furnace, but otherwise it was relatively recent and it was an iPad. I found that Apple wasn't giving me what I needed, so I went back to Samsung. Apologies to all the apple people, but it's just not right for me. So that disappointed me, it was a bigger investment and then I thought I should have tried it properly first.
What brought Olga to the procurement business?
Martin Hurych
Like I said, you've had a bunch of buying positions and that's why you're here. You've been through different companies, different products, I guess the last stint at Packet is worth mentioning, and then something happened and you opened your own boutique. What happened to that boutique and what led you into buying in the first place? Because in the Czech Republic a lot of buyers say that it's a very unsexy position.
Olga Rinaldi
That's true, but I don't think so. When you go into buying and you start creating and you start changing, you see results there very quickly that are quantifiable. So you're able to show pretty quickly what you've done, and it's also an area that's incredibly dynamic compared to, say, sales. I like change, the adrenaline and the action is something that definitely energizes me, and there's a lot about buying. It's really where what's supposed to be tomorrow doesn't have to be tomorrow at all, what was is long gone and you've got to move through it and that's what I enjoyed. The first time I tried shopping, which was 21 years ago, I knew right away I didn't want to do anything else. It suited me, it's an area that suits me, I can be creative there, I can make decisions that I'm responsible for, so some risk analysis and behavioural analysis is definitely in order. You need to work hard to get to a certain outcome and also sell that work internally within the company. It's been a really huge test and challenge and I've enjoyed it.
But at some point I got tired of it, and it was at a time when I really had sort of gotten over that corporate buying career. It was just at Packet, and at some point I thought it was always about the same thing and I just had to keep convincing somebody and pushing somebody and it was kind of killing me. I didn't want to be an employee anymore, plus the years are adding up, I have a young son, I want to spend time with him and I want to manage that time myself. Plus, I've been wondering for a long time what to do if I wasn't an employee and needed to be much more flexible. Going into something on my own was the obvious choice, because I'm not the type to be completely afraid to go anywhere. New things are a challenge for me, I want to give it a go and if it doesn't work I'll try something else. It's not something that's going to completely knock me down, some failure, I've had enough of those.
So I've been thinking about what, I've been thinking about how, I've reached out to a few people because I knew this was already something where I needed to get some a different opinion, and Rinaldi Consulting eventually dropped out. It's kind of a manifestation of my dream when I said I wanted a big company because the procurement needs it. I don't want to be self-employed, I've that too, but practically there's no difference to being an employee because you're working one company and you're giving some of your output to that company. I wanted to build something that holistically encompassed that procurement from A to Z, from training and coaching to huge large scale transformation, digitalization, we want to deploy robust ERP tools. I found that there weren't many of us out there in the market who could grasp it that way, then I found that it was an awful lot of work and I needed to really start building that business from the ground up. Now it's starting to take off, of course I also need to let the world know that I'm here and I believe I can do procurement.
What is the difference between procurement and purchasing?
Martin Hurych
Before we move , it's probably a good idea to define two terms that I think get confused a lot in the market, purchase and procurement. How do you see it?
Olga Rinaldi
Purchasing, procurement, purchasing, supply chain, there are too many interpretations. Every company has it differently, in the airline industry purchasing is called the team that handles what procurement does in the tobacco industry. They're synonymous. As a procurement manager, I was in charge of warehouses, for example, which should be under supply chain. So I guess I wouldn't focus completely on what's what, but rather what are the responsibilities and what that department is in charge of, because you'll never know otherwise, everybody's got it completely different.
How to set up a collaboration between store and purchase?
Martin Hurych
I, whenever I post anything on LinkedIn regarding a negotiation or trying to sell something to a buyer, I arouse a lot of resentment on the other side. A lot of times I also feel that we are confusing, for example, my bubble with the bubble of the person who is commenting, and that's why I need to define here what we are going to talk about next. I'm interested in how to collaborate between business and procurement on the other side when there is something sophisticated between us, like a large investment unit, some ERP moloch, custom development, things that can't be simply collated in Excel. I'd be very interested to know how to approach this from your side and I'd like to gradually get into how to set it up in a partnership way so that we both understand each other and don't throw sticks under each other's feet. On LinkedIn it's often a battle of the cunts over who is the bigger king and who can outsmart who, as the Slovaks say, and I'm tired of it.
Olga Rinaldi
I totally understand, because sometimes I've shot your comments myself. It's true that buying capital equipment or ERP systems, when right now in Packet it was a robust ERP system, is not a matter between the buyer and the seller. That's such a big project that should be managed by someone impartial as well, because purchasing should mainly get in there at the beginning when they are figuring out who is going to deliver in the first place. There should be purchasing and the technical side that defines what should be acquired, why and what it should meet. The buyer is not a commodity person, of course it could be some super mechanical engineer who wants a say in it, but otherwise I think most of us are not commodity people. We may have one commodity, I have steel for example, but with these units there has to be a lot of people around, a whole team. It's really project management and there should be a defined project manager.
Procurement should be there at the beginning when a supplier is selected and make sure that the one that is selected can deliver what the technical side needs. You need to check that the supplier is healthy, not bankrupt, there is no problem, who they have worked for, get references, check that it works. That's the role, to get a feel for it, to meet them, to see how they work, how their company is, that's kind of the added value that purchasing gives to that when they're looking for a supplier. That's the main thing should be at the beginning and what buyers should be trained on, how to vet that supplier, whether its one, two or three. I don't think with complex units like this, we're not talking about letting out a request for proposal, we're buying 12, 15 suppliers for this unit, sign up, that's deadly. That's the kind of pre-preparation where he can evaluate those contractors, assign them some points, and out of that comes some recommendation to Procurement, watch out for that contractor here because there may be risk. We'll assess those risks, do a risk analysis and put it out there in that project team. We all have to work together.
Like with that ERP system, the internal customer is pretty much everybody who's going to it, which is the biggest hell because you've got 30 people total and 29 of them don't want it, so for me it was oneone of the most challenging projects ever. However, it was relatively easy to select a system supplier. It probably wasn't too difficult, we actually had hours of discussions, the whole team worked on it so that the supplier was able to offer us what we wanted. At that time the owner had the final say and said which system it was going to be because she understood it.
Then comes the implementation itself, which is really walking on hot stones, you probably know what ERP implementation involves and there the purchase does not play such an important role. For example, I was in that core team, there procurement was implemented right away because we want to get the costs under control and if you have a process, a system, you get it under control, that's non-negotiable. So I was there for the whole project and I was painting what the model for procurement should look like and what it should meet. Then I slowly needed to back out of it because then the real technical stuff was being dealt with, where the super IT people who understood the system were sitting. They started discussing all sorts of things there that are then unfamiliar to a non-IT person, so I just let them work it out and then I just wanted to hear what we were going to do next. These are projects that are for many years.
What should the communication of purchasing look like inside the company?
Martin Hurych
We are in the implementation phase. I'm still interested in the purchasing process. You decide to do some purchasing and you said yourself that it's so complex that you have some team on your side that's buying it and purchasing has some sort of completely overlooked role in that. We've been fighting against that for years in the business, that the salesperson is the bottle neck that brings information from one side to the other and is that single point of contact. Sometimes I think there's a terrible pressure on the buyer or the procurement manager to be that one hole into that company and you're not allowed to talk to anybody beyond him.
It also seems to me to be a terribly slow process from a procurement point of view. How do you think it should ideally work?
Olga Rinaldi
It is buying and buying. The head of procurement should be the one through whom the information flows in and who has to make the right decisions about how to distribute it afterwards within that company. He definitely can't process everything, and a smart head of procurement will already smell it and once there's something where he knows he needs that internal team, he'll start moving it. It's not about just me as the head of procurement wanting to deal with you as a system supplier. This is exactly about I'm going to get the IT guy here, the CTO here, and I'm going to leave you here, I'm going to listen to you for a while, I don't know what you're talking about, tell me how you did. I want to know how you've done, where we've gone, show me what the next steps are, is there a milestone that we've reached, and I'll process that. There are some cases where the head of purchasing really should be the decision maker, the filterer, the one who's running the whole thing, and the salesperson or the salesperson on the other side should just be dealing with them. There are most of those cases in that overall purchasing for a corporation, for example, but then there are exactly those investment things or large units where expert has to be there, but the head of purchasing has to know about it.
Martin Hurych
It seems to me sometimes that purchasing, even in terms of the fact that internal processes don't exist yet, feels like it's a fifth wheel in that company, that it's trying to push that information into the company through itself. A lot of times that used to be the case with sales as well, but with sales today we say you're holding the business back. It seems to me that a buyer like that is holding back the buying process pretty dramatically. Is that right?
Olga Rinaldi
It's not like that. I did it too. moment you don't have internal processes in your company and you need to implement them as a purchase, one of the first steps you take is to concentrate on that very thing externally. You're not going to know it now, but I'm actually already there watching what's happened in the past while we're talking about some business time. We're actually analyzing it because if you come into a company that's just transforming or wants to have a professional buy in, I'm not going to let you go in there anymore to deal with somebody else because it's going to fall where we don't want it to fall. We're breaking down those bridges that are between you as a salesperson and the internal customer, which might be the head of maintenance. We want to break that and we want to build it differently. We're going to put you back in, but we want it to already be clearly set up in terms of how you're going to operate, where it's going to be stored, how we're going to see the results, and how we can work with that data.
Martin Hurych
That means that the trader can paradoxically help you in this, because this is not a debate about bypassing you, this is a debate about speeding things up. If we keep you permanently in the debate and get some more or less formal agreement that we can talk to the project team you have built behind you there, that's actually to the procurement's aid. Is that right?
Olga Rinaldi
Yes, it's certainly important for us to know how the background business worked and what's important there. If we are talking about speed, as you mention, there is already a problem there and that is already one of the warning signs we have to say why it has to be so fast. So we have to work it out so that the speed is not needed there. The fastest way to do that is when a customer from the company sends you a text message saying they need something delivered by tomorrow and you text them back saying you can handle it. That's not good.
Martin Hurych
It's clear that marketers are pushing to speed up their business processes, that's clear, that's what we're paid to do. The other thing I often see that buyers really slow down the buying process because a lot of my clients' clients will come in and say they need it immediately. Immediately means that we're rigidly driving some buying process, we're holding the whole thing back because some level of control undoubtedly has to be retained by purchasing, but de facto at that point it often goes against their own business. It's an internal customer who is terribly enthusiastic himself and then doesn't get what he wants at the times he wants.
Olga Rinaldi
If you come to me as an internal customer and you need it fast, I'll ask you why.
Martin Hurych
It's because I usually didn't think about it before. That's human laziness.
Olga Rinaldi
That's it, so if we give the impression that we're delaying it, it's precisely because we want to set up the process, set up the system so that you know when to order. It needs to be clear that when your inventory drops to a certain level, we need an automatic order to be generated here and it goes to the supplier and then we don't even need to know about it. So get your own way and then come critique the purchase. We need to follow the processes and we need to teach you, even if it gives us nightmares.
Who in the buying company prepares the evaluation criteria?
Martin Hurych
So we have a project team, we know how you as procurement have set up your processes, we have the ERP, which objectively equates to one excel spreadsheet terribly badly. So how do you build that on your side? How do you judge us?
Olga Rinaldi
Not us, the experts, and we need you to do that. We need those who will judge whether the solution offered by company A is better or worse than the solution offered by company B. We are not even able to prepare the evaluation criteria because we don't know, but we know that we want them. So we will go back to the project team and push them to drop specific criteria that are evaluable. Again, they don't know how to lay it out, but we do, so we'll put our heads together and get it ready. We then find those points that match and we can evaluate them and there are internal criteria, there are external criteria. External criteria, the contractor will know about it, internal criteria, we deal with it internally. There's a lot of things, but no buyer should be doing this alone, definitely not.
Can the supplier help?
Martin Hurych
Is there any chance to participate from the supplier side?
Olga Rinaldi
Sure, I want it. I don't like submissive contractors who nod and in their heads what a stupid thing to do. That's wrong. I need a contractor who tells me it won't work and explains how it would be better. If a buyer says they gave a specification, they have to follow it, and won't discuss it with them, and has no good reason to do so, they're a bad buyer.
What if I have the wrong buyer against me?
Martin Hurych
What do I do with him when he's facing me?
Olga Rinaldi
It's very difficult. The way you as marketers can start to deal with it is to find a tremendous amount of humility and say you want to take another look at it, there's something wrong, email it and maybe he'll think about it and then call. But if you come across a buyer like that, who actually tells you that he wants something and he wants to deliver it, and you know in advance that if you deliver it to him, there might be a claim six months later and it's going to be a problem to explain it to him, it's an unenviable situation.
Martin Hurych
But I think that's the majority here. Isn't that ?
Olga Rinaldi
No, call if there's a problem.
Why do buyers with foreign experience behave differently?
Martin Hurych
I don't doubt at all that you're Brutus when negotiating the price, but it doesn't seem abnormal to me I've said it before on a podcast where I was a guest. My understanding is that good business is done by the trader having to sell dearly and buy cheaply. I did have a part in my corporate time where I was picking strategic partners and people that were . In buying, they treated their partners very differently, and I actually find that anyone who's had corporate experience or studied outside sees buying in a much more strategic and nuanced way than people who say that price is the only thing that determines buying. Do I see it the same way you do?
Olga Rinaldi
It certainly does. I've come to that conclusion too, the beginning was about having great results because I saved money here, but that's not what it's about at all. It's more important to keep that price constant and know that I'm buying the best I can and that I can absolutely rely on whoever is on the other side to supply me. Those are things that I absolutely value and what it takes to do that business together. If it's a one-off event where I need to buy something and use it once, then I'll go to the marrow and don't care who supplies it, we can there afterwards. If 's strategic stuff, then you need to have a reliable supplier who will pick up the phone at midnight on a weekend, which unfortunately happens. It's a huge benefit and saves a lot of time, stress and nerves for the buyer. So anyone who, with strategic material, just says they want to buy it cheapest because they're going to save terribly, I think they're making a big mistake and it's just a short-term view. I don't believe that's how buyers do it, I believe that they really don't even know that there are completely different aspects to the decision than just price.
Martin Hurych
What other aspects are important to you in this strategic segment besides price?
Olga Rinaldi
Monitor the supplier, if you are going to be my supplier, I will monitor you very closely and regularly because it will be important for me how you grow, how you perform and if you have any problems. For me, your failure is a huge risk, but it's also so that when you start to stumble over the precipice that I come in, offer you that help and we start to solve it together. So one of those important things is to judge a contractor by their financial health, by how they're doing in business. Again, that's something that I'm going to have to talk to you about, that's a very important thing for me.
The other is the terms and conditions, of course, because a lot of suppliers can dazzle you with price, but then the first problem happens, you need service fast, but you can't call them until Monday. It's a terrible thing to watch out for here. It's service, it's spare parts, what good is a super fancy thing if the spare part takes 4 months to arrive. That's another thing to take into account, how quickly you can get the thing, for example, replenished with those spare parts.
Then it's important who is doing business with you, who is your partner, if you trust that person, if they can communicate with the people they are supposed to communicate with in your company. There's an awful lot of things and you really have to prepare very thoroughly for each tender, which is all important to me. I would say that one of the things that's flawed about procurement is that they can't figure out what they actually need from that supplier.
Martin Hurych
I just thought of a little nudge question. How much is my likeability worth, how much are you willing to raise the price if you like the merchant or company?
Olga Rinaldi
It's not I'm gonna raise the price, it's that I can give you priority. It's not that if you're nicer, I'll add 10 cents a piece. If we downright like someone, and I've experienced this a few times, we like the approach, we like the speed of response, but we helpin order to have the best supplier.
How to offer to buy a novelty on the ?
Martin Hurych
If I have launched something that is better than what exists on the market, how do I reach you? Logically, at this point in time, there's a ton of information on the internet, your internal user or customer may know about it and can bring up a lot of things themselves. Should I, as a marketer, tell him that I'm not going to talk to him because I need to talk to Olga first or else Olga will stomp me and not give me love when you shop it?
Olga Rinaldi
No, talk to him, just him. When there's something like this, it's important to come up specifics. If you're developing a product that might be a little bit better and more useful than what's currently on the , bring it. By all means, marketers, bring samples, show us how it works, let us get on it, we want to touch it. When you come up with the solution, come up with the numbers. You're ready that company because where you're going to present your new product, you know what that company is using and you should have already come up with a handout where you say they're using this, but yours is going to make them more efficient. If you come up with that, we'll definitely pay attention to that. So you need to have data, specific data, show how it works, run a video, compare it to your existing product, give as much specific information as you can. We want innovation, it's definitely desirable.
Martin Hurych
So you don't want them to turn to you when they're shopping, but will you give them a chance to convert something new?
Olga Rinaldi
One day a supplier came in and said that they and the lab had come up with a coating for the boxes that made them much more durable, and it had already been tested and it looked something like that. In 14 days it was deployed. I just love the innovation when it makes because we want to be better, faster, go with the market. Anyone who resists innovation is making a mistake, they're a dinosaur. On the other hand, it may be that we say, it works for us now, we can't go for it, or it's such a huge hit to the operation or to the whole structure that we can't do it now. I had a problem with that when they were testing different materials because when you're testing you have to stop something.
Martin Hurych
When is introducing new stuff a casual coffee with that internal customer and when do you want to know about it? We figured that if you're actually picking, you've got some kind of project team in there for the hard stuff. That project team has to make a decision based on something as to whether they're going to go for a change because we both know that people don't like two things, status quo and change, change is always pain. So the project team has to feel that they really want to change something. Each one of them is a professional in their own way in that particular area, I'm sure each one of them is surfing the internet in the area that they are interested in, so they have a lot of information. Before that project team starts shopping around, they want some market intelligence. The question is whether I as a marketer should always go back to Olga and ask,
if I can, if I get a contact there, or I inform and process that person within the fair, newsletter. Where is the limit of when I should already come to you?
Olga Rinaldi
In the beginning. Now, you just reminded me that every time there's an engineering fair, I get all tingly when I see who all from the company has gone there. Then my colleagues arrived, threw me catalogues and the best part was when they'd already agreed they wanted a totally cool waterjet, so they pre-ordered it.
Martin Hurych
I understand you don't want this. If you're supposed to be responsible for the economic performance of the purchase, this is obviously wrong for you personally. On the other hand, we can't pretend that the people in the company are blind and can't be talked to.
Olga Rinaldi
Let them wear those innovations, they are the ones to deliver, they are the ones to invent. But if I find a supplier that's fine, has something that I need, I'll come in or I'll send an email to the buyer that this supplier is here and we need to vet them before they go into negotiations with you. We then say 's great, let them negotiate with them and then when they need us, we'll jump in. I think most of these things work out that way, they already know, but it's important that the procurement is respected in that company because then it works for us. If we have internal customers who don't respect us and just want to bypass us, then everybody loses out, procurement, the supplier, the internal customer. I would say that's absolutely the biggest hell.
Why does the buyer transfer internal company problems to the salesperson?
Martin Hurych
Now you've hit the nail on the head. I actually feel that companies have a mess of purchasing, incompetent purchasing people and by not being able to get people inside the company in order, they then pass it on to the sales people and say they won't let anyone in and they have to go through purchasing. I'm going to indulge in a cruel thought that seems far more human to me. You have two people talking at the same level who have an interest, and then I understand that the person inside the company who is buying should have enough discipline and should know the processes to say we're done here and now we need to go to the buyer. That's where the price will be negotiated or if it's going to be bought at all. This would make sense to me, but it seems to me a lot of times the dealer is then blamed for not following regulations that de facto don't exist, and we have a mess out there, so I want to be the conduit to channel that. That doesn't make any sense.
The salesperson is often beaten up for bypassing some internal processes they don't know about, instead of angry at the internal customer and getting that one straightened out.
Olga Rinaldi
Why do you think we're angry with the shopkeeper? For us, it's just the problem with the internal customer, that's why I have workshops on this, because this is what's hurting the company terribly. It's not your fault because you don't really know, you can ask and I'll tell you, because it's better and then you'll avoid the problem.
Martin Hurych
I know, but I teach companies that then tell us that when they happened to run into someone who there, they didn't follow those internal regulations. It may not be that they don't know them or that they don't exist, there many times it's just human animosity. I won't talk to the buyer because he doesn't understand. How many times does that salesperson have a stigma on his forehead that he violated something instead of getting that purchase resolved internally within the company.
Olga Rinaldi
It's also it's already looking like an internal customer is pushing a of his on us. Watch out for that.
How to treat the design phase of the evaluation criteria?
Martin Hurych
So how do you treat that phase before you start putting together the decision criteria? If I'm waiting to be approached, I'm very much in a passive position and I don't like that as a marketer because I'm a hunter by nature. That means I'm trying to influence these things from start to finish. Again, this episode is supposed to be about doing it right and doing it nice on both sides. So how do I approach you so that I'm not stepping in your shoes, maybe aggravating my position in the selection process, but at the same time helping you get the criteria right?
Olga Rinaldi
This reminds me that the supplier finds something that is completely unique only in his case and immediately stuffs it in as a criterion. That happens, but I think it's about communication. We're kind of afraid of hyperactive salespeople, but like I said, we're all different and what works for me won't work for someone else. I don't want a submissive salesperson who approves of everything, but there may be someone who really wants to be the one who nods off again, even though that may not be possible. So it's important to know who you have in front of you and to load that up. That's why, for example, I'm not a big fan of different training courses how to negotiate, which are absolutely uniform, clear, because it's different. It depends on who's sitting opposite you and you have to be able enough to read that person and adapt to them. If you negotiate with me, you'll know how to get to me and you'll go straight to me. Someone won't want to meet you at all and will say, to sort it out in traffic and then go to him. The most important thing that we as buyers need to improve is that communication and cooperation with the internal customer. Then that's where our conflicts are, the fights that you don't see at all, but one passes it on to the other and then of course the whole business is on its knees.
As a supplier, what do you require from your buyer?
Martin Hurych
So, let's assume that in the end we high-five the whole project team and start delivering. For example, I am used from corporate where my procurement partners had quarterly, half-yearly, annual supplier reviews, where the reviews were not about price, but about the development of the supplier, the transfer. A lot of our suppliers maybe weren't as technologically up to speed as we were in corporate, so it was about technology development, some discussions about what was needed, and then there was some price evaluation sometimes annually. What do I, as a supplier, for example, require from my buyer to know that I'm in the clear? I'm supplying somebody, I've sold to somebody, the buyer of the counterparty, my customer. What right do I have to demand from him so that he doesn't surprise me once a year and say he didn't like something? Do I have the right to demand some regular development meetings?
Olga Rinaldi
Find out what he rates, he'll tell you. For example, if we're using one of those robust ERPs, then of course deliverables are important there, if it's a project module, then again we're looking at how various milestones are being achieved and whether everything is running to plan. It's important for you to know what's being evaluated, what's the most important thing to that buyer and definitely ask them, as you just said. A lot of suppliers have already started doing that and asking and I think that's absolutely fine. If they ask in the that asked, we're going to say, you've got something wrong here, let's take a look at it, and now the discussion is open.
Martin Hurych
I'm used to it, I'm rather surprised that it's not often the norm. What I see is, we deliver something, it runs for 3 years, then I pray, I get a letter saying it has to be reordered and I don't know where I stand. Generally I see that it's not set up at all, that there's no need for any dialogue from either side and that surprises me terribly.
Olga Rinaldi
's getting better. I would say, especially after Covid, I started to see that and I think a lot of suppliers have changed their behaviour. Of those strategic suppliers, everybody has called or even messaged me from time to time to see if everything is okay and if we're operating the way we're supposed to. We do see the data, there's no doubt about that, but asking for that information I think is pretty standard now.
Martin Hurych
That's good, because I personally saw a big difference between a procurement and a buyer. To me they are completely different words, to me procurement is someone who is more strategic, more educated, more business savvy, whereas I see procurement a lot as being a one-time junior Excel operator.
Olga Rinaldi
I'm sorry, because that's not how it should be. I have buyers under procurement, I'm the head of procurement, and I have buyers, purchasers, buyers under me, it doesn't matter. There's seniors, there's juniors, there's administrators, there's ERP experts that I know won't go and deal with a supplier because it's not their domain. It's important for the company to give the head of procurement the space to put the team together the way he needs. When you have ERP, it's absolute nonsense to have x dozen people in procurement because that's stupid. You need to use the system as much as you can and gradually work on those people and shape that team so that the structure is sensible. But the buyers are there, and the role of the head of purchasing is to convey to them how I tend to communicate with suppliers and expect feedback from them or that information. Obviously, the buyers that work on my team need to know that as well, so that we're consistent, so that we're all performing the same way. If I get a call from a supplier saying they have a problem with a buyer on my team because they're not answering their phone, that buyer won't even know and I'll praise them for saving time. So it's really procurement and there are buyers underneath and it's not strategic purchasing and operational purchasing.
Martin Hurych
Maybe it's just my vocabulary, because when someone acts as a procurement, they usually have corporate experience, they have some education and they see the business as a business. They know that if they send 10 buyers to a supplier somewhere for a three-hour discussion to argue about marginal things, that the meeting itself is more expensive than the savings they're getting. It drives clients crazy when a buyer asks for a cash- back bonus before the contract starts, which is what happens. After the tender process is over, I have clients who are confronted with the fact that here's volume that we're not promising you, but we want a cash back bonus for it before the orders start.
Olga Rinaldi
I'd be embarrassed, because that's definitely not okay.
Martin Hurych
To end on a positive note, if for some reason someone was skipping to YouTube or Spotify and didn't hear a lot of things and the next few sentences stuck in their head, how would you sum up today's episode? What's the most important thing for marketers to take away for you, what's the ideal right way to collaborate?
Olga Rinaldi
My long-term goal is to break down that negative line between buying and selling. I think that's wrong and bad for business. Merchants, sales people, be completely open, tell buying your ideas, innovate, go after them, but go with discounts, we value that very much, that's one important thing. What I take away from today is that I'm really happy that the effort to make it work is there and I see it on LinkedIn. I see it on LinkedIn as well, where again, in my bubble, there are salespeople, there are buyers, and they're starting to have discussions with each other, and I'm really about that. I would like the salesperson to see how the buying process works so that at the exact moment when you feel like we're holding up your order because we're playing some processes here, you can see that it makes sense because there's no other way.
Martin Hurych
I hear there should be some fairness and constant communication on both sides. Help us do that, Olga. Thank you very much and I wish you to get your consultancy off the ground, may the branches you want to open be twice as many as you can imagine.
Olga Rinaldi
Thank you so much, I would that. Thank you, that was great.
Martin Hurych
So you heard. Although we sometimes treat each other a little more harshly on LinkedIn than perhaps is appropriate for a social network, there are some normal-minded people on the other side. If we've given you an insight into what procurement in a proper company should look like, we've done our job well with Olga. If that's the case, send this episode to someone who might find it useful, lick and give subscriptions wherever you're watching or listening right now. To reiterate my first request, if you like what I do, consider signing up for my newsletter subscriber list, which already has 1,300 email addresses of owners and CEOs of engineering, technology and manufacturing companies. I have no choice but to keep my fingers crossed and wish you success in more than just procurement, thanks.